User Login

January 1 is a holy day of obligation not because we celebrate the first day of the year, but because we honor Mary as the Mother of God.

Non-Catholics think we commit idolatry by deifying Mary. We don’t. But if Mary is human and not divine, how can a mortal being be the mother of the eternal God? Indeed, only God is absolute; nonetheless, out of infinite love for humanity, the infinite God has freely chosen to become human. The eternal Son has embraced our human nature and has been born of woman. Mary’s motherhood of God is certainly not about Mary becoming divine, but about God becoming truly human.

This Sunday of Advent, we await anew Christ’s coming into the world and into our lives, but we also commemorate in a few days Mary’s Immaculate Concepcion. Allow me to share a few reflections on divine self-emptying love, manifested in the incarnation of Jesus Christ and responded to by Mary.

As we have it, the parable retold by Matthew is most likely an embellishment of the original story narrated by Jesus. Jesus castigated the religious leaders of his time for rejecting and persecuting the prophets of old, including him. Very often the religious leaders held on to their power over Israel, symbolized by the vineyard, making life burdensome for the people, signified by keeping the fruits of the vineyard for themselves.

The Early Church wrestled with how to deal with Christians who had offended fellow Christians. Our Gospel today provides a four-stage process of fraternal correction within the local community. First, the aggrieved party is instructed to dialogue with the offender in private. If this private conversation does not settle differences, a witness is brought in. If the conflict remains unresolved, only then does the community intervene. When all else fails, the intransigent offender is ultimately excommunicated from the Church.

Alone in our grief. We who are often wearied by the weight of our troubles can find comfort in the stories of Elijah and Jesus in our readings today. Pursued by the troops of Queen Jezebel, Elijah, the last surviving prophet of Israel, flees and finds refuge in a cave in Mount Horeb. Exhausted and exasperated, he complains to God about the intransigence of the Israelites and the fruitlessness of his prophetic work. “Take away my life,” he begs the Lord. Dejected and desperate, Elijah runs for his life and attempts to run away from his mission.